Today I received a short report from Mr Alexander in relation to my new product. His comments are below. He also comments on a question I raised about showing product to paying customers.

Hi Ged,

This is better. A shame there is still some repetition, but not to the same degree as before.

To respond to the question you posed on your blog: if there are shots that you really don’t like, then don’t show them to the client! Sometimes, there might be great shots that you know they won’t be interested in, so it may be prudent to keep hold of these yourself (particularly when they’ve bargained your copyright from you!)

But ultimately, when you are working commercially, you have to relinquish some control, and accept that you are just one creative in a chain of several. actually, I’ve generally been quite happy with how designers have edited and used my images.

They see things in your shots that you don’t because they can imagine how they will work with text, logos and particular layouts.

I will submit both calendars for assessment in July as it will be interesting to get another perspective. Although Mr Alexander always seems to hit the nail on the head!!

Viewers will have seen that I decided to create a desk calendar with images from the Eurostar terminal at St Pancras station in London.

For the product that I chose you need 52 images , one per week. This in hindsight was an error, as I had to use images more than once.

Mr Alexander noted this as follows.

Your particular product is quite challenging: As it’s week-by-week calendar, so there a lot more pages to fill than a regular calendar. If I were receiving this – although it’s meant to be a free-be – I’d feel that the repetition of images is disappointing. So, choosing a different product would have certainly made life easier for you. With that said, the actual product is nice, and, with the right imagery, I think I’d be very happy to keep on my desk.

However you will see that he did say that he wouldn’t mind the item on his desk, which I thought was a good sign.

In view of the above comments I have looked at a different product which needs less images I will create a new desk calendar , in a different style which I hope will be more pleasing.

This was an interesting assignment as you had to take a number of images that you think that the client would like.

You can take as many images as you like but the customer may have a different view of what they want. What happens if they choose an image that they like but it’s not one that you like yourself ? Does this cause a problem for you?

My tutor , Mr Alexander has sent me his feedback report in relation to this assignment.

I had decided to take a series of images designed to attract people to visit Dorking in Surrey. The images would appear on a council website or in a handout.

The assignment was made up of a contact sheet, a number of images that were selected for final publication and a number of rejected images.

Here is a section of the feedback report.

I think you set a good, clear, and achievable brief for yourself (marketing images to attract tourism to Dorking). I suppose the real test of the success is whether it really makes the viewer –in this case, me – want to visit. And, for someone who’s never been to Dorking; I think your images probably would persuade me to pay a visit.

In relation to an image taken of a restaurant, with no people/diners shown the following comments were made

The shot looking in to the restaurant is nice, but it is missing the food! I don’t want to come to Dorking and go hungry! Obviously getting a shot like that would need some co-operation [people don’t like be photographed by a stranger whilst they are eating!] but as a visual strategy, I think this shot could have worked.

I was pleased with the report. I took the images over a number of days and wanted them to appeal to different types of people.

The comments made about having people eating in the shot were interesting. I think that if I was producing the images for a council then I would have had a couple of models in the shots having lunch!

A nice exercise that made me think outside the box. What does the client want? You have to take the right type of images that will stand the test of time and show the town in the best light possible.